Restart hostapd without disconnecting clients

I have seen this thread

and other similar threads , but i couldn't exactly find an answer for the below

I have multiple devices connected to the AP , and if i add one of the device to the blocking list, i would have to restart the wifi
i can use the command "wifi" to restart the particular radio
however all the connected clients connected to that particular radio getting kicked out, is there any way to silently restart the hostapd without affecting the clients?
But seems, that applying any wireless settings would need restarting the interfaces , but i am kind of stuck without any foreseeable solution
You can imagine, that i have more than 10 devices connected of all sorts (like from Phone to Camera to the Fridge) , All of them getting kicked out just because i want to block one laptop.

Hostapd does clear all the client data structures when the config is reloaded, effectively dropping all the clients. So poking banned MACs into hostapd.conf is never going to work as you want.

In OpenWrt the running hostapd can be instructed to drop / ban client MAC addresses one by one with the ubus call del_client. These bans are held in RAM and optionally can be made to expire.

1 Like

Ok thanks,
will explore that ubus call and see what can be done